Alternative to Germany (AfD). 2 – Turn right

In August 2010, Dr. Thilo Sarrazin, an economist with a rich business and political career, author of many publications, published a book entitled “Deutschland schaft sich ab” (Germany liquidates itself). He accused immigrants from Muslim countries of creating a parallel society, giving you more social costs than they supply the benefits of developing the economy, etc. The book sparked a national debate about immigrants; it turned out best seller, nearly 1.5 million copies were sold by the end of 2010

This debate has almost forgotten the host disputes around the euro. AfD rapidly realized that immigration criticism would be political gold for her. The decision to law favoured AfD's successful election results to local authorities in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in late summertime 2014. The AfD structures there considered that alternatively of the criticism of economical liberalism to date, it was now essential to "warm" right- populist themes. The head of the AfD in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, announced the "Erfurt Resolution", in which he openly questioned the average conduct of the party's own leadership. At the same time, members of the marginal right-wing games (Partei Rechtsstaatlicher Offensive, Republican, Die Freiheit) began massively entering the AfD and pushing into its authorities of various levels.

As early as 2015, it became clear that the AfD leadership, which inactive consisted mainly of average politicians, had mostly lost the support of organization officials and private members. Bernd Lucke attempted to regain control of the organization by changing the charter, according to which AfD would be headed by only 1 president – he himself. And although the organization conference in Bremen approved Lucke's proposals, the conflict for power in the organization intensified. At thepatia convention in Essen in July 2015, Lucke lost to Frauke Petra the election for president of the AfD. He did not recognise the result of the election, gathered his supporters in his own club "Weckruf 2015"; there was a split. By the end of August, the organization had left around 1 5th of the then 21000 members, including Lucke, Henkel, Ulrike Trebesius, Bernd Kölmel and Joachim Starbatty, activists of the liberal-economic wing. The majority of the Weckkruf members supported the creation of a fresh Eurosceptic organization led by Lucke. However, the task did not accomplish its objectives and was not even attempted to compete in the 2017 Bundestag election.

Although AfD managed to get to the Land Parliaments in Hamburg and Bremen in May 2015, disputes inside the organization led to a decline in support on a national scale of little than 5 percent. It was only the September 2015 exile crisis, which Alexander Gauland described as a "present" for his party, that was to bring a turning point. As a spokeswoman of protests of a population profoundly afraid about the uncontrolled influx of refugees, AfD gained in the polls. Islamist terrorist attacks, which after Paris, Brussels and good besides reached Berlin in December 2016, and attacks on women by Maghreb immigrants in fresh Year 2015/2016 in Cologne, a dispute in the national government over the "assignment packages" and criticism from any of the chadeks of their own chancellor fueled the popularity of AfD. In the Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate elections in March 2016, AfD first scored a two-digit score in the West of Germany, 15.1 and 12.6 percent respectively, and in Saxony-Anhalt achieved the best score (24.3%) in the past of right-wing populist parties in the Land elections. The elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (20.8%) and Berlin (14.2%) in September 2016 continued the winning series.

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The programme adopted at the Stuttgart organization Convention in May 2016 was, indeed, inactive a continuation of the market-neoliberal course, which was chosen at the beginning of the AfD. However, he no longer reflected the power arrangement in AfD after strengthening the national-conservative wing, whose representatives advocated not only cooperation with Pegid's movement, belonging to Islamophobic and xenophobic, but besides to open contacts with the utmost right-wing environment of the NPD (National Democratic organization of Germany).

In the Land elections in Saar (March 2017) and in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia (May 2017) AfD again safely entered national parliaments. This time the results did not scope the 2016 records, as commentators saw in the progressive radicalization of AfD. For example, Höcke described the Berlin Holocaust Memorial as “a memorial of shame” in his January 2017 speech. In addition, there were individual conflicts over power. With her bossy kind of leadership, Frauke Petra alienated so many organization members that she had to quit her ambition to become the lead candidate in the national election. At the Cologne organization convention, Alice Weidel was elected in place of Petra, who, following the national elections with Gauland, took the presidency of the parliamentary group.

Cdn.